Apple Releases Free Xcode 4.6 in the Mac App Store

Toolset includes SDKs for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and iOS 6.1

Previously only available to registered Apple developers, Xcode 4.6 is now available as a free download in the Mac App Store with SDKs for OS X 10.8 and iOS 6.1.

In tandem with the release of iOS 6.1 for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, Apple pushed out the latest version of Xcode, the company’s developer toolset for coding iOS and Mac apps for digital distribution on its acclaimed App Stores.

Xcode 4.6 is a free download from the Mac App Store and includes SDKs (software development kits) for OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and iOS 6.1, more accurate code completion heuristics with an optimized default data set, and new compiler warnings that help developers identify potential bugs when using ARC and weak references.

There’s more. The new Xcode has built-in support for C++11 for “user defined literals” and “unrestricted unions” features. The debugger included by default with the toolset can now inspect elements within NSArray or NSDictionary objects.

Developers relying on the “Analyze” function to code their apps will be glad to learn that the tool now performs deeper cross-function static analysis of Objective-C and C++ code.

Also worth noting is that Apple has been able to reduce the number of indexing passes due to improved dependency checking.

The usual bag of fixes and stability improvements is also incorporated in this release.